Bae Kyung-hoon, deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT, said he would discuss creating a dedicated electricity tariff with the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment to support the AI factory project jointly pursued by Nvidia and Korean industry.
Bae made the remarks when he met with reporters Monday at the Shilla Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, just before a meeting with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, in response to a question about how to resolve power issues for expanding AI infrastructure.
"There are no problems related to AI data center power issues through 2030," Bae said. "We have already had various discussions with the climate ministry, and if (the scale of AI infrastructure) exceeds the megawatt level, we can create a dedicated power tariff, and we will actively cooperate with the climate ministry to that end." He added, "An AI factory means building a gigawatt-class data center factory. It cannot be done simply by having graphics processing units (GPUs) alone; power issues and overall infrastructure construction issues must be discussed."
Regarding his meeting with Huang, Bae explained, "Vera Rubin supply could be slightly delayed, so we will request to receive it on a top-priority basis," adding, "We will discuss a lot related to physical AI and AI factories overall." He added, "There could be some discussions on the (supply of) more than 260,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) that were promised back in October last year."
